Hey, guys! I think
it’s time to talk about movies again!
[Audible groan heard from across the internet]
Okay. Yeah, I get
it. For a fairy tale blogger I talk
about movies a lot. But it’s hard to
have a blog about fairy tales and pop culture without talking about the biggest
purveyors of pop in the world. Besides,
if I didn’t talk about movies and other forms of visual media, this would
basically just be another book blog.
Now, what prompted this talk about movies? Well, it wasn’t fairy tales, it was
legends. The legends of King Arthur and
Robin Hood in particular. And it was
this video by Patrick H. Willems: Robin Hood, King Arthur, and Hollywood's Problem with Public Domain Properties.
Go ahead and watch it.
I’ll wait.
Anyway, what Willems is pointing out is that for the past
decade or so, adaptations of traditional characters like King Arthur and Robin
Hood haven’t been all that popular. And
he points out that the way they’re being adapted and how long the gap has been
between adaptations might be an issue.
And you know, he might be right. I didn’t see either of the last two King
Arthur movies or the Russell Crowe Robin Hood movie. They just looked unappealing. And I wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint why
they looked unappealing. Now, keep in
mind, as a storyteller and someone who did a 12 part series on famous legendary
figures, I am probably as close to being in fandoms for Robin Hood and King
Arthur as anyone is. So, if I’m not
interested, that’s a bad sign. But
here’s a thing about the recent Robin Hood and King Arthur movies: they didn’t
really look all that much like Robin Hood or King Arthur movies. At least, from the trailers and commercials I saw. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword didn’t seem to emphasize much Arthurian legend
in its advertising as much as it emphasized the new gritty street tough origin
they gave to Arthur. Advertisements for
Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood emphasized
the gritty tone and also cast in the role of Robin Hood, a character often
described as “merry”, an actor known for frowning his way through most of the
movies he stars in.
Overall, I think this brings up the question: “How
beneficial is having a bold, radical take?”
Now, I’m not trying to say that creativity isn’t a good
thing or that filmmakers should just repeat the work of others. It’s just that for people who aren’t
storytellers or fairy tale bloggers, these stories are well-known but not
something they think about all the time.
So, when the chance comes to encounter these tales again, they may want
to remind people of the things they loved about them in the first place.
With some radical takes, it’s even possible to just miss the
point of the character in question. Take
Pan, for instance (a movie I actually did see in theaters, I regret to say).
It was supposed to be
Warner Bros. attempt at creating an origin story for Peter Pan. However, amid a whole number of bizarre story
choices, their biggest mistake was their tired, clichéd concept for Peter. According to Pan, Peter was a half-fairy
“Chosen One” who was supposed to save Neverland. It ignored almost all the subtext in J.M.
Barrie’s story and even directly contradicted things stated about his back
story.
We could actually look at Disney’s current fantasy movie
initiative in regards to this. Now, I
have heard about a million explanations for why some of these movies do
well. That it’s just because of the
Disney brand. That it’s just because
they’re remakes of already popular movies.
Or, in the case of the 2015 Cinderella movie, that it’s just because it
came packaged with a Frozen short. But
what if those aren’t the reasons? Let’s
stick with Cinderella as an
example.
The 2015 Cinderella movie came out in 2015, naturally. The last widely released Cinderella movie
before that was a modern teen romance version entitled Another Cinderella Story in 2008 seven years before. That movie was a sequel to another modern
teen romance version A Cinderella Story in
2004. Before that, you’d probably have
to go back to 1998 and Ever After. Mind you, this isn’t counting movies that go
straight to DVD or television, which are certainly things that happen with
fairy tale movies. But when Disney’s
decidedly traditional 2015 version of Cinderella came out, it ended up making
543.5 billion dollars on a 100 million dollar budget. They made that money on a Cinderella movie
that was just Cinderella. Not “Present
Day Cinderella”. Not “Cinderella in
Space”. Not “Cinderella Warrior
Princess”. Just old-school Charles
Perrault stuff. And I remember people
criticizing the film for not doing a bold new take, and explaining away its
success because of branding and because it came with a Frozen short. But maybe people were just ready for another
traditional take. Sure, fairy tale and
movie bloggers who think about this stuff constantly may have been
disappointed. But regular people who
haven’t thought about “Cinderella” in a long time were probably just thinking
“Oh yeah, Cinderella! I remember that! I should take the kids to see it.” Meanwhile, movies with less familiar takes on
famous characters like Oz the Great andPowerful and Alice Through the Looking Glass underperform.
It’s not to say a different take can’t be fun. It depends on how it’s done. For example, going by trailers alone, this
upcoming King Arthur spin-off The Kid Who
Would Be King looks like a lot of fun.
It may be a silly, kid-focused take with modern school
children fighting the forces of evil.
However, the trailer shows more fun, recognizable Arthurian stuff than
the trailer for last year’s King Arthur movie did. Here we see the sword in the stone, Merlin,
Morgana, Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake and even a tongue-in-cheek take on the
famous round table. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’s trailer showed the sword in the
stone and that’s it.
We’ve still got a ways to go through fairy tale and “public
domain character” movies. We’ve got a
Nutcracker movie with seemingly no Mouse King up next (how many movie adaptations
of Hoffmann’s story do we get? Very few. Would it kill us to have a definitive
non-ballet take?). And then a Robin Hood
movie that looks for all the world like an episode of the CW’s Arrow. But, the studios have long slates still in
the works. Maybe they’ll come up with
some good, solid, interesting takes yet.
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